WI-SEN 2022 Megathread: Who stole my cheese?

[MT Treasurer]

Pretty weak candidate. Lost WI-8 in a landslide in 2016.

Running a “strong” candidate still won’t win Dems this seat in a Biden midterm.

Depends. Against Johnson, there might be a small opening. Against Gallagher? Hell no.

No, it's not winnable in a Biden midterm, period.

Also, I don’t get why he thinks Johnson is a "weak" incumbent or that Gallagher is more likely to win statewide than Johnson. Just because you personally don’t like/like either candidate doesn’t mean they’re inherently more/less "electable" than the other, something many people here need to understand.

At this early stage of the cycle/race, I’d rate this Lean R, but it’s obviously a must-win for Republicans.

[MT Treasurer]

Ron Kind and Mike Gallagher are both overrated. This is a Lean R race with virtually any halfway competent Republican against any Democrat.

[MT Treasurer]

If Pocan somehow manages to make this very competitive or is even close to flipping the seat for Democrats, Wisconsin will be the least of Republican worries. I maintain that this will be the most overhyped Senate race of 2022.

[MT Treasurer]

Grab your popcorn, it’s ‘RonJon tells it like it is’ time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMdwlhMXm4I

Already looking forward to the swings to RonJon in #populist rural/small-town WI in 2022.

[MT Treasurer]

I don’t really get why people think Baldwin is underrated. She’s never had to run in a R-leaning or even neutral environment and won by double digits because she faced one of the worst Republican candidates of the cycle in a massive D wave year. Obviously she could win if 2024 is another favorable year for the party (and I do expect her to outrun Biden/Harris by 1-2 or so), but I don’t see how she has more of a brand than someone like Tester or even Casey. She would have done worse than Stabenow had she faced a similarly credible Republican candidate.

[MT Treasurer]

Because Johnson keeps saying crazy, stupid things. He keeps on shooting himself in the foot. After saying something like this, he'd be crazy to try to run for re-election, as if he thinks he can still win.

That’s not how these things work, in general. You may be overestimating (a) how tuned in voters are to his 'gaffes', (b) how many voters actually consider them 'gaffes' rather than agreeing with him/accepting his branding, (c) how salient of an issue these 'gaffes' will be after two years under a Democratic trifecta which is going to pass a lot of unpopular legislation.

Sure, the Democratic base is going to be fired up to vote him out, but they were already fired up to vote against Republicans across the board anyway. Any R Senate candidate here is going to need the Trump base to come out, and Johnson is well suited to energizing them and taking advantage of the rural/small-town R trend to offset some losses in WOW (where he should still run a few %-points ahead of Trump, even if it’s not more than 3-4%). Based on the fundamentals of the election alone, it would be crazy to assert that "he can’t win again."

[MT Treasurer]

RoJo's culture warrior shtick has always been fairly performative (with all sides buying into it), so I’m not at all surprised by this. He’s about as much of a 'Trumpist' as Jon Tester is a 'populist.'

[MT Treasurer]

RoJo's culture warrior shtick has always been fairly performative (with all sides buying into it), so I’m not at all surprised by this. He’s about as much of a 'Trumpist' as Jon Tester is a 'populist.'

And that actually makes him even more reprehensible.

It’s more effective than (solely) running on stadard conservative economic policy, especially in a state in which base turnout is paramount and the GOP is so reliant on maximizing rural/small-town R votes to offset the unfavorable metro trends and a very energized D base. Granted, if he promotes conspiracy theories about the vaccine while privately believing in its safety, then yes, that would absolutely be reprehensible given that literal lives are at stake and the worst fears are being stoked by such rhetoric. I’d prefer it if politics wasn’t such a dirty business, but alas...

It’s generally not easy to run against candidates who are so skilled at dragging you into their preferred campaign arena and capable of overwhelming you with their branding — you always run the risk of reinforcing your opponent's themes/brand (in this case turning the election into a culture war clash against an 'authentic' warrior who tells it like it is). If I was running against him or against any other politician (including Baldwin) whose appeal is so grounded in their perceived authenticity, I would try to exploit the "Ron Johnson is playing politics with all of us" / "Ron Johnson can’t be trusted to fight for us" / "Ron Johnson never put you ahead of politics" angle more (this episode/recording is emblematic of that). I can certainly see why others would choose a different approach, but continually tying Johnson to the insurrection/Trump also risks playing into his hands if it’s not executed carefully.

[MT Treasurer]

The only thing I've heard him say regarding vaccines is that nobody should be forced to take it, and that not every single person needs it equally. Up until mid-2021, that was a very mainstream position outside of upper-class liberals and not at all a conspiracy. However, it was very much a conspiracy in 2020 to say they were going to mandate vaccines for basic recreational activities like restaurants, or if you work for a company with 101 employees (not 99 though, covid doesn't infect those). Is there something else I'm missing? (asking anyone)

I mean, I support his reelection, I just vaguely remembered him hinting at their unsafety even though he is (?) vaccinated himself, but I wasn’t sure at all. Sorry if I was wrong. He’s completely right about the mandates and some of the CDC guidelines, and I do think backlash against COVID policies will help him a lot in rural/small-town WI in 2022. He really needs to run it up in those parts of the state to offset the trend away from the GOP in the Milwaukee/Madison metros & Green Bay. I also think D turnout (including in Milwaukee) will be very high in WI, so he can’t afford a substantial drop-off in R turnout like in 2018 (not that I’m expecting that).

I think the race is Lean R, with the GOP winning by 3, maybe 4 points.

[MT Treasurer]

Baldwin hardly ran as a Sanders/Warren clone in 2012/2018, though. Her shtick is "I can’t be labeled because I will always fight for you," and most of her ads focused on her work for rural/agricultural communities (e.g. drairy farmers). As unfortunate as it is (in a just society, these identity-centered appeals would backfire rather than help), it’s going to be much harder to pull that off with a black Milwaukee politician with a history of working on the advancement of people of color and perceived as more threatening than the calm middle-aged white woman who speaks from her kitchen table and/or is surrounded by 'rural' white males in half of her ads. A candidate having an 'ideology' identical to that of some other, successful candidate will not always ensure their own success (see: Jon Tester/Kathleen Williams — there was a certain cohort of Trump/Tester voters that Kathleen Williams would have never reached even if she had run the strongest campaign possible). As much as I wish that voters evaluated candidates based on ideological grounds and voting records, it often just isn’t the case, which is why the same line of (ostensibly ideological) attack like "Candidate xyz is too liberal for WI" or "Candidate xyz is out of touch with our values" may work against one candidate but fall flat against another.

Also, Leah Vukmir was an absolute disaster candidate (hers was by far one of the worst-run Republican campaigns for Senate that year). Baldwin wasn’t going to lose that year, but I do think her margin (and the ensuing perception of her popularity/crossover appeal) was somewhat inflated by that poor R campaign & the drop-off in R turnout.

[MT Treasurer]

Agree with almost all of this, but it's also worth noting that Tammy Baldwin *does* at least demonstrate that it's not the case that being a liberal candidate is a death sentence. I could be wrong, obviously, but I do not think a Warren endorsement will hurt or help. It will probably almost entirely come down to what types of campaigns the two candidates run as well as how good the year is for Republicans writ large.

Fair enough, I completely agree that the importance or impact of endorsements is overstated. They might help or hurt slightly if they reinforce an overall pattern (not unlike yard signs, they may play to social desirability by making the choice more acceptable to the voter or dispel doubts about their choice), but if Joe Manchin endorsing Hillary Clinton wasn’t enough to sink him or deconstruct his brand in 2018, believing that Warren endorsing Barnes will doom his campaign is absurd. Susan Collins literally endorsed Paul LePage in 2014 and still outperformed him by more than 30 points (!) on the same ballot. Expecting swing voters to "draw conclusions" based on things like endorsements (or anything, really) is a cardinal sin no competent campaign would commit.

If a Warren endorsement ends up "hurting" Barnes, it will be because he was always going to be hurt by something reinforcing that 'liberal elitist' theme simply because he was already easier to paint as an 'elitist' to begin with and has no carefully crafted statewide brand to counter that. However, it would by no means be the endorsement itself that would hurt him, and it’s not like Republicans wouldn’t have employed that line of attack if Warren hadn’t endorsed him.

Also note that the "populist" Tammy Baldwin was one of the most vocal supporters/influential organizers of the Clinton 2008 and 2016 primary campaigns in WI, a state where Clinton performed very poorly in both her runs. Baldwin also called Clinton's flip-flop on TPP a "non-issue," but of course no one is going to entertain the notion that Baldwin’s an "inauthentic" career politician or as "out of touch" with the electorate as Clinton. You’re not going to beat someone like Baldwin or Johnson without dismantling the perception that they’re authentic warriors "in it for you" rather than just predictable, power-driven career politicians who will reinvent themselves whenever it benefits their electoral prospects. Note Stabenow's underperformance in MI compared to Baldwin's result in WI — both have been serving in Congress for about the same period of time (Baldwin since 1999, Stabenow since 1997), both have practically identical voting records, both were supporters of Hillary Clinton (Baldwin even more so than Stabenow), etc., but one was (and still is) easier to paint as your unrelatable typical Washington career politician increasingly out of tune with the state.

Even if endorsements did matter this much, the idea that an endorsement from September 2021 would be on anyone's mind in November 2022 is of course ridiculous and again overstates the average voter's attention span (another cardinal sin).

[MT Treasurer]

I really don’t buy that Gallagher would outperform Johnson in this race solely because he’s (ostensibly) more 'moderate' — the guy is not tested statewide, seems way too polished in a state that loves its "authentic" elected officials, and has no real distinguishable brand. Johnson's ability to turn every issue (even inflation, deficits, etc.) into a culture-war clash has a record of selling well even in WOW and the Green Bay area (can we dispel with this notion that this kind of messaging only works in rural areas? many posters seem to be unaware of how Johnson actually ran in 2010 and in which parts of the state he really crushed Feingold), and there’s obviously no doubt that he can supercharge rural/small-town turnout for the GOP. Democrats are also somewhat likely to make several strategic mistakes running against him in particular, like recycling the anti-Trump/insurrectionist playbook (did not work for McAuliffe) or running a gazillion ads painting Johnson as an "extremist" or "radical Republican" (something every voter already knows) while doing nothing to dismantle his perceived "authenticity" (same mistake Republicans make when they run against "socialist" Baldwin).

Either way, Republicans aren’t losing this race in a Republican wave environment. Likely R with Johnson or Gallagher.

[MT Treasurer]

Here’s the official announcement:

https://twitter.com/ronjohnsonwi/status/1480182975937531908?s=21

I almost teared up reading this, and I’m not even an emotional person. Honestly overjoyed that he is running again (even if dismayed that he won’t get the absolute landslide victory he deserves). Now more than ever, it’s clear why we desperately need him in the Senate.

[MT Treasurer]

The issue might have to do with the fact that the vast majority of polls (including/especially in this state) have been favoring/overestimating one particular party for four election cycles in a row.

[MT Treasurer]

I don’t think Johnson was ever ahead by "high single digits" unless his inflated lead was just the result of the disparity in name recognition between the incumbent and his unknown D challengers and the undecideds were always very D-leaning.

[MT Treasurer]

Upon seeing this thread, he had the epiphanic realization that he couldn’t win in a state like WI with a partisan voting record, which prompted him to tone down his extremism a little. Swing voters will appreciate his stance on this issue and remember it when they enter their polling place, rewarding him for softening his tone and displaying an independent streak. Lean D -> Lean R.

[MT Treasurer]

Honestly,
Is Mandela Barnes a strong candidate or not at all?

WI Republicans are (understandably) very confident that they can paint him as way too liberal for the state and as a rubber stamp for Biden. Here’s a very good analysis of this race which goes into some detail about the likely trajectory of the GE campaign and also sheds some light on why Ron Johnson is actually a very difficult candidate to run against despite being "controversial" (and arguably precisely because of that, which is something many on the left do not comprehend) -

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/crazy-isnt-enough-democrats-scrutinize-ron-johnsons-every-move-effort-rcna42165

This part stood out to me -

As for Johnson’s often controversial comments, Republicans shrug off most of them as utterances that outrage only Democrats and the media. Several Wisconsin operatives with knowledge of the political tracking cited focus groups with would-be voters that found a consistent response to a controversial statement the senator had made: Johnson must be doing something right if he’s ticking off that many people.

Triggering the libs can actually be an asset, who would have thought. The problem with their strategy is that running against Johnson's 'extremism' ("Crazy isn’t enough") does little to undermine the perception of him as an outsider-businessman who instead of having gone Washington is still fighting the worst excesses of Washington/the federal government and tells it like it is — someone who you can always trust to tell the truth and to fight for you. He reminds me a lot of Jon Tester in how he consistently manages to make people forget that he has been part of that same Washington for more than a decade.

The general vibe I’m getting from this article (and the race in general) suggests a far more favorable outlook for Republicans than seems to be the current consensus on this forum. In fact, I still think this race is quite an uphill battle for Democrats. However, the good news for them is that they don’t need this race for a majority.

[MT Treasurer]

The fact that “triggering” a large percentage of one’s own constituents that they’re supposed to be representing and working for is a very damning indictment on American politics and society as a whole. Would it be a good thing for teachers to “trigger” a lot of their students? Or for doctors to “trigger” their patients? This isn’t new, though, as we’ve known this for a while, and more than half of the country seems completely fine with this, sadly.

Pretty obvious that I used the term somewhat ironically to comment on what the participants in those focus groups said. Besides, I don’t think this is so much about Johnson trying to "trigger" his own constituents as it is about taking the fight to a disingenuous media, out-of-state liberals, and out-of-touch D.C. Democrats. This kind of persona would be a lot less appealing if there wasn’t already a perception that liberals had a monopoly on the major institutions in the country and Republicans had a long history of giving in to the other side instead of actually fighting back for their base. All I’m saying is that Johnson (unlike Oz, Walker, etc.) actually knows how to tap into this sentiment.

The point wasn’t to cheerlead for Johnson but to help explain much of his appeal to Republican and a large number of independent voters (and to point out why being "controversial" isn’t always a liability). The irony is that these social security comments would hurt a more polished Republican more than Johnson because they’d stand out more in the case of the former. With Johnson, it’s always the same pattern of controversial comment -> even more media outrage -> even more liberal donations -> even more Democratic attack ads. At some point, you run the risk of voters no longer caring what exactly the latest controversial comment was (again, note the focus group observations). What exactly does digging up every controversial comment he’s ever made or every controversial vote he’s ever cast achieve? Does it really undermine the incumbent's brand? Does it really make him look less trustworthy?

It’s not easy to think like a swing/undecided voter when you’re not actually one yourself, but it’s not hard to imagine why voters might think that Johnson means it and someone like Oz doesn’t. Trust (no matter how misplaced) is a very powerful thing.

[MT Treasurer]

I think most politicos would take an 8-point come-from-behind win, even if it means DC media will write mean things about them when they die.

Kinda surprised they have the guts to go with this theme. Usually it’s just Democrats "going for the jugular" (and they love to do this) while Republicans unilaterally surrender—only to posthumuously wonder why they didn’t win, of course. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if they only changed it from "Mandela Barnes scares me" to "Mandela Barnes doesn’t have the judgment" at the last minute.

Also looking forward to seeing just how many potentially promising political careers social media will end in the coming decades.

[MT Treasurer]

Barnes was the wrong candidate for this race. Johnson remains the luckiest guy in Republican politics.

Not just directed at you, but one of the earliest and costliest faux pas you can commit when running against a consistently successful & battle-tested incumbent (esp. one that you’ve underestimated three times in a row) is to chalk their entire success up to mere luck just because their ideology/voting record/rhetoric doesn’t align with yours or with your preconceptions of what a "swing state" Senator's ideology/voting rhetoric/rhetoric should look like. I only mention this because I’ve seen Democrats on here and people in general fall into this trap whenever they have disdain for a particular incumbent (Republicans with Jon Tester, Democrats with Ron Johnson, etc.).

Part of the reason Democrats thought they could get away with nominating Barnes is because they assumed the 'extremism'/'radical liberal' attacks wouldn’t work in this race since voters would perceive Johnson as even less moderate and more 'extremist.' However, the man obviously has strengths in his own right which are clearly unrelated to 'ideology'-

https://twitter.com/RonJohnsonWI/status/1583580889535156237?cxt=HHwWmsC4nbmbgfor...

This seems like a very basic ad, but when you dissect it, it’s actually remarkable how many themes/key parts of the candidate's messaging are condensed and interwoven here in merely 30 seconds.

[MT Treasurer]

I agree with what you've laid out here though I don't think this being true and Johnson being remarkably lucky are mutually exclusive (and the same seems true of Tester).

Fair enough, I didn’t mean to imply that they were mutually exclusive; they aren’t.

However, looking back, I’d argue that 2010 and 2016 (but esp. 2010) were still fairly impressive wins by Johnson. It is worth noting that Johnson was of course the lone Republican to beat a Democratic incumbent in an Obama state in 2010 (and in an Obama +14 state at that), something that is often forgotten because of the size of the wave in the House. Obama also won WI by more than NV/CO in 2008, yet the GOP lost both of those states in 2010. The WI race is also notable for being one of the very few which did not see a late shift toward Democrats in the final weeks of the 2010 campaign (or only a minor shift at best).

As far as 2016 is concerned, Feingold clearly had his share of vulnerabilities that made him a risky candidate in hindsight; however, many of those vulnerabilities were also not easy to piece together and communicate to the average voter (Johnson makes this look much easier than it actually is).  

This year, I think there certainly were a few Democrats who would have done slightly better than Barnes, but I’m not sure anyone could have won in this environment. I also think the dramatic geographic/internal transformation of the D base in WI does the party no favors — while their Milwaukee and esp. Madison-centered coalition is very reliable in GE elections, it is also prone to nominating candidates which are less appealing to a statewide electorate.

[MT Treasurer]

As voters have already begun streaming to the polls, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson this week raised doubts about early in-person absentee voting in Milwaukee and suggested his supporters in the city hold off from casting their ballots until election day.

But Johnson, who faces Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes in the Nov. 8 election, encouraged Republicans to vote early in other areas of the state.

"I would recommend early voting if you have a Republican election clerk," Johnson said during a tele-town hall Monday night in a clip tweeted by the advocacy group Heartland Signal.

"I'm not sure I would recommend a Republican go vote in Milwaukee," he added. "I don't know about the bipartisan observation of those early votes. It might be possible."

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/10/27/ron-johnson-raises-doubts-about-early-voting-in-milwaukee-fall-election/69597452007/

His spokeswoman said that those were tongue-in-cheek comments, but still noteworthy.

Also, here’s an interesting article detailing how RoJo relies more on talk radio for cultivating his personal brand and connecting with voters than any other Senator:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/ron-johnson-wisconsin-radio.html